ELN TV

innogy has been granted approval to increase the maximum installed capacity of its planned Sofia Offshore Wind Farm from 1200MW to 1400MW.

The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has approved amendments to relevant marine licences, allowing it to potentially power an additional 150,000 average UK homes every year, taking the total amount of power it could generate up to enough to supply nearly 1.2 million homes.

The facility will now be able to use larger turbines with a maximum rotor diameter of 288 metres, up from the 215-metre span outlined in the original consent.

The proposed wind farm site covers almost 600 square kilometres and will be located 165 kilometres off the coast at Dogger Bank in the North Sea.

Sofia Project Director David Few said: “We applied to change the project’s development consent order and marine licences to ensure that Sofia would be able to employ the latest generation of larger, more efficient and technologically advanced wind turbines.

“The approval decisions are clearly excellent news and now mean that Sofia will be able to make an even bigger contribution towards achieving the UK’s carbon emission reduction targets.”